Articles

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Mix Hart and I will be reading from our YA novels at the Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, on Thursday, October 22, 7 p.m. Admission is free, there'll be a book signing to follow, and everyone is invited.

Lydia Buckingham is an ice queen. She wasn’t
always that way, but after her parents uprooted the family to move to an isolated
and rundown farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, she has been forced to adapt
this personality in order to survive in rural Saskatchewan. Despite her
interest in the local history at Batoche, Lydia finds herself unable to
relate to her peers at school or to her surroundings. To top it all off her
parents are constantly fighting and abandoning Lydia and her younger sister
Victoria for days on end. Soon the sisters have had enough, and they decide
to set out alone into the brutal Saskatchewan winter.

Sophie, in Shadow, a
story of spies and conspiracies in India under the Raj, was shortlisted for a
BC Book Prize and for the 2015 Sunburst
Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

On the long journey back to Gangtok, it
came to Sophie that she had been part of a great adventure, a secret mission
from a Kipling novel. The mission had been accomplished with no lives lost (or
one, perhaps, but happily not one of their own). The hostage was safely
rescued. She, Sophie Pritchard, had acquitted herself well.

On one side rode Darius, the dark-eyed
scholar with the face of an Indian prince, and on the other, fair-haired Will,
the wounded hero. In a different kind of story, Sophie would be the brave,
adventurous heroine who by saving the day had earned their respect and
admiration. Some surprises might wait for the denouement, but if you turned a
few more pages all would be tidily resolved.

Sadly, in the world that Sophie knew, there
were no storybook endings.